Posts Tagged ‘SEC’

“Our current cronyism is not the property of one political party or the other. As with any cancer, it does not care who it attacks or where it spreads. In the process of unearthing and exposing these crony Wall Street- Washington paths, we have come to learn that large numbers from both political parties, their well-heeled financial benefactors, and many of our financial regulators, all sit on one side of the table while the general investing, consuming, and taxpaying public — along with a large percentage of Wall Street’s own employees — sit on the other.”

A full 6 years from the onset of our ongoing economic crisis, I remain convinced that our nation’s markets and economy remain burdened by the cancer that metatstatized from the corrupt Wall Street-Washington dynamic.

I stated as much in my book as quoted above.

Many have asked me if the current crisis was not enough to excise this cancer what might it take. Another crisis? (more…)

Selling counterfeit stock would seem to be a nefarious undertaking worthy of meaningful exposure.

It is.

A recent suit against the SEC under the Freedom of Information Act looks to do just that. Let’s navigate as the law offices of highly acclaimed and widely respected SEC whistleblower Gary Aguirre recently released the following statement:

Lawsuit seeks to tear down SEC’s veil of secrecy

Journalist Mark Mitchell has filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to obtain the agency’s investigative files relating to more than a dozen aborted investigations and cases involving naked short selling. (more…)

The hearing will focus on two specific conflicts of interest: payments by wholesale broker-dealers to retail brokers for their customer orders, known as “payment for order flow;” and “maker-taker” rebates or fees that, depending on the circumstances, exchanges either pay or charge to brokers for executing trades on their platforms.

While I hope that some meaningful discussion might expose some of the crony, if not corrupt, practices within our markets, if past is prologue I am prepared to be underwhelmed. Why so? (more…)

“Financial institutions that are ‘too big to fail,’ combined with politicians who are too compromised to govern and regulators who are too captured and corrupted to protect, produce an incestuous cabal that is simply too big to trust.” pg 187, In Bed with Wall Street: The Conspiracy Crippling Our Global Economy

America is now well attuned to the fact that Wall Street banks that are ‘too big to fail’ are also ‘too big to regulate’, ‘too big to prosecute’, and ultimately ‘too big to trust.’ Of this there is absolutely no doubt.

As if those injustices were not too much to bear, we learn this morning that these banking behemoths are now also ‘too big to bar.’ How is that? With major props to one of the few lone voices crying for integrity inside the regulatory ‘tollbooth’ that is the SEC, I welcome giving SEC Commissioner Kara Stein real credit for standing up and speaking out on this ‘too big’ topic. The following statement is a little lengthy but oh so worth it. Let’s navigate as Commissioner Stein issued a dissenting opinion on the SEC website that qualifies as an instant Sense on Cents classic: (more…)

The abbreviated definition of insider trading is “the buying or selling of a security by someone who has access to material, nonpublic information about the security.”

Who could possibly be more “inside” than an individual who is in the position to take action against a company, that is employees of the Securities and Exchange Commission?

In another edition of “You Can Not Make This Stuff Up,” a recent paper highlights how employees at the SEC are superb in terms of their stock trading and specifically their stock selling skills. Let’s navigate. (more…)

I thank the countless number of individuals who have introduced me to various media representatives (print, radio, and TV) throughout the country to discuss my work both here at Sense on Cents and in my book In Bed with Wall Street. In the hope that even more media doors might open, I would like to link to a talk I gave earlier this week at Baruch College.

I thank the individual whom I have not met and do not know for having captured my remarks and posted them online. In my talk, I touch upon a host of topics addressed in my book including serious allegations and evidence connected to the misappropriation of funds and insider trading within Wall Street’s self-regulatory organization FINRA, abuse of whistleblowers, sham protection provided by SIPC, and much more including my proposed reforms.

Confident that more than one door to media outlets will be opened by my posting these remarks, I thank those who might share this link with friends and colleagues both inside and outside of the world of media.

I am personally partial to New Hampshire’s “Live Free or Die” but in light of the opacity displayed across Wall Street and Washington over the last 4 to 5 years, I have a growing appreciation for Missouri as the “Show Me” state:

A name attributed to Representative Willard Van Diver. It connotes a certain self-deprecating stubbornness and devotion to simple common sense.

How about that? Common sense? What a novel concept in light of recent events in our nation and certainly applicable for my blog.

But I think about Missouri this morning given breaking news out of the SEC regarding its first meaningful whistleblower award in perhaps the last 25 years and its largest award ever. Isn’t this the type of thing to highlight and promote? (more…)

“Doing the right thing can be hard” . . .
David Weber, former assistant Inspector General of the SEC, June 10, 2013
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In a world in which it is all too easy to look the other way, to go along to get along, and to sit down when the public needs you to stand up, hope springs eternal.

I am heartened that America still has a chance to eradicate the corrosive and corruptible elements that have thrived within our financial regulatory system when I learn that there are still people who care enough to do the right thing. Who is one of those people?

Former assistant inspector general of the SEC David Weber. Today is his day and America should feel very good about that. (more…)

If Mary Jo White were to be confirmed as the new head of the SEC, might she be the most conflicted individual to be our nation’s chief financial cop since the first person to occupy that seat, that being Joe Kennedy himself?

The White House and Washington would like to position Ms. White’s confirmation as nothing more than a formality. Our democracy deserves better than that. (more…)